Abstract
This chapter examines how legislation regarding emigration from Belgium, annexed by the French Republic in 1795, challenged definitions of the émigré. For most of the revolutionary period, legislators established legal distinctions between individuals who crossed France’s borders with an intention to emigrate and those who were traveling for legitimate reasons. But the legal debates about, and lived experience of, émigrés in annexed territories, who often found themselves crossing borders they did not know existed, problematized the status of intention and will in the definition of the émigré and, by extension, the citizen. The very definition of a nation as a contractual body of willing citizens, so crucial to revolutionary ideas of sovereignty, was tested and ultimately undermined by the circumstances of alleged émigrés from annexed territories.
The author wishes to thank the members of the Portland-area French History group, especially Patricia Goldsworthy-Bishop, Jessica Hammerman, Tom Luckett, Sue Peabody, and Barbara Traver, for their comments on an earlier version of this chapter.
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Notes
- 1.
Archives Nationales (Henceforth A.N.), AF/III/582, plaquette 3982.
- 2.
For purposes of clarity, I will refer to these regions of the southern Netherlands as ‘Belgium’ in this chapter, although the term is anachronistic.
- 3.
Although this chapter focuses on the tensions of the first tenet, it is worth noting that alleged émigrés in Belgium and, later, the so-called Rive Gauche du Rhin, had laws applied to them in different ways than those in the métropole: the French nation as of 1789. Because the law of 25 Brumaire, discussed below, was passed before Belgium was a part of the French nation, it was applied retroactively to Belgian cases of emigration, meaning that Belgians were punished for violating a law of which they had not been aware. See A.N. BB/1/108, ‘Ministère de la Police Générale, Rapport aux Consuls’ in which a French official states that the Directory had intended the law of have a ‘retroactive effect.’ See also A.N. BB/30/166 (dossier 2), Mémoire sur la question de savoir si la loi du 25 brumaire, an 3, est applicable aux citoyens absens des ci-devant Provinces Belgiques, for further discussion of the retroactive application of the law.
- 4.
A.N. F/7/3564.
- 5.
Archives Parlementaires (henceforth AP) 28: 74 (9 juillet 1791). All translations, unless otherwise noted, are by the author.
- 6.
AP 34: 395 (25 octobre 1793). Quoted in Ladan Boroumand, “Emigration and the Rights of Man: French Revolutionary Legislators Equivocate,” Journal of Modern History 72.1 (Mar. 2000): p. 97.
- 7.
AP 23: 569 (25 February 1793).
- 8.
Ibid.
- 9.
Boroumand, ‘Emigration and the Rights of Man,’ pp. 107–108.
- 10.
Quoted in Ibid., p. 83.
- 11.
Keith Baker, “Sovereignty” in Francois Furet, and Mona Ozouf, eds., Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 844.
- 12.
On ideas of nationhood in the pre-revolutionary period, see David Bell, The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003); Peter Sahlins, Unnaturally French: Foreign Citizens in the Old Regime and After (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004).
- 13.
Jean Bart, “Citoyenneté et naturalité,” in Citoyen et citoyenneté sous la Révolution Française, ed. Raymonde Moynnier (Paris: Société des études robespierristes, 2006), p. 35. ‘L’élément déterminant est moins le fait d’être né ici ou là, de parents d’ici ou d’ailleurs, c’est cette volonté d’adhérer à la cause révolutionnaire.’
- 14.
Pierre Louis Le Caron, ed., Code des émigrés, ou Recueil des dispositions législatives (Paris, 1825), pp. 76–77. This law, nevertheless, required all émigré children over the age of ten to return to France immediately, suggesting that ten (!) was the age of responsibility.
- 15.
On the status of female émigrés, see Jennifer Heuer, The Family and the Nation: Gender and Citizenship in Revolutionary France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), chapter 4.
- 16.
AP 34: 401 (25 October 1791). Quoted in Boroumand, “Emigration and the Rights of Man,” p. 96.
- 17.
John Torpey, The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship, and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 41.
- 18.
In addition to Nice and Avignon, which became a part of France before the start of the wars.
- 19.
Le Caron, ed., Code des émigrés, p. 179. The law went on to clarify the dates of expression of ‘the resolution of the inhabitants’ for the regions recently united with France: Savoy, which had become the département of Mont-Blanc; Nice and Monaco, which had become the département of Alpes-Maritimes; and the short-lived Republic of Rauracie, which had become the département of Mont Terrible.
- 20.
Edward James Kolla, Sovereignty, International Law, and the French Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2017). As Kolla demonstrates, the means of acquiring and demonstrating consent varied from territory to territory, as did the amount of coercion that took place. See, in particular, pp. 121–159, on the case of Belgium. Jorg Fisch argues that the various referenda taken in the revolutionary period to demonstrate consent ‘served clear power-political aims, [and were] not an open or domination-free decision-making process.’ Fisch, The Right of Self-Determination of Peoples: The Domestication of an Illusion (Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 88.
- 21.
A.N. AF III/584, Rapport no. 4538, Quarré femme Ribaucourt, year 8.
- 22.
This was true as well in other annexed departments. In the département of Mont-Terrible, where more than 3% of the population was ultimately put on the Liste Générale, alleged émigrés were given dates of departure stretching back to a full year prior to its 1793 unification with France. See Jean Suratteau, “Problèmes frontaliers de l’émigration révolutionnaire: l’exemple du Mont-Terrible,” Bulletin d’histoire économique et sociale de la Révolution française (1967): 23. For a contemporary discussion of when to date the start of the Revolution in the region, see A.N. BB/1/108, “Extrait des registres des séances publiques de l’administration départmentale du Mont-Terrible séante à Porentruy au 1er de la 2e décade au 2 mois de l’an 2 de la République française.”
- 23.
The 1795 annexation took no referendum. In reality, whatever will Belgians had expressed to join the French nation was likely as much a result of the horrible conditions of the French occupation, which were, in the words of Michael Rapport, ‘ghastly enough to persuade even Belgian conservatives that becoming part of France was for the best.’ Michael Rapport, “Belgium under French Occupation,” p. 54. On Belgian ideas of self-determination, see Jan Roegiers, “Belgian Liberties and Loyalty to the House of Austria,” in Nationalism in Belgium, ed. Kas Deprez and Louis Vos (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998).
- 24.
“Loi sur la réunion de la Belgique et du pays du Liège à la République française du 9 vendémiaire” (Paris: De l’Imprimerie du Dépôt des lois, 1795).
- 25.
See endnote 4 on the retroactive application of the law.
- 26.
As Miranda Spieler has written, ‘During the French Revolution, the soil and geographical limits of France became symbolic expressions of the regenerated French people.’ Spieler, Empire and Underworld: Captivity in French Guiana (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012), p. 21.
- 27.
A.N. AF/III/582, plaquette 3982.
- 28.
See, among others, the petitions of Guillaume Becker, Jean-Henri-Joseph Beeckman Vieusart, Francois-Charles-Regis Baesen, Dominique-Joseph Bonnard; Jean-Francois Philippe Dasson, Maximilien de Béesen, Theodore-Fourneau de Cruquembourg, and M. and Mme Goossens, all of whom claimed illness (most with justificatory documents) as a reason for not returning within thirty days. A.N. AF/III/582.
- 29.
Sophie Wahnich, L’Impossible citoyen: L’étranger dans le discours de la Révolution française (Paris: Albin Michel, 1997); Michael Rapport, Nationality and Citizenship in Revolutionary France: The Treatment of Foreigners 1789–1799 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000).
- 30.
Boroumand, ‘Emigration and the Rights of Man,’ p. 107.
- 31.
James Scott, Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 3. Quoted in Ben Kafka, “The Demon of Writing: Paperwork, Public Safety, and the Reign of Terror.” Representations, no. 98 (2007): 17.
- 32.
Sylvie Aprile, Le siècle des exilés: Bannis et proscrits de 1789 à la Commune. (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2010), p. 55.
- 33.
See the note from the Minister of Police in A.N. F/7/3565, dossier Bonchamps: ‘Un individu qui a été inscrit sur la liste des émigrés (quelque soit sa position actuelle) ne peut circuler dans l’intérieur de son département sans l’agrément du préfet, il ne peut pénétrer dans aucun département et surtout dans celui de la Seine, sans l’autorisation du ministre de la Police Générale.’
- 34.
A.N. F/7/3654, 4 fructidor an 13.
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Miller, M.A. (2019). The Impossible Émigré: Moving People and Moving Borders in the Annexed Territories of Revolutionary France. In: Philip, L., Reboul, J. (eds) French Emigrants in Revolutionised Europe. War, Culture and Society, 1750 –1850. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27435-1_2
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